Albert Einstein had all sorts of crazy-sounding ideas—that objects should grow more massive and clocks should slow down as they approach the speed of light, for example, or that space and time are united in a single entity called “spacetime.” Some, like dark energy, were so crazy that even Einstein didn’t believe them (foolishly, as it turns out.)

But perhaps the craziest-sounding idea of all, at least for anyone without a physics degree, is that massive objects literally warp the space (OK, the spacetime) around them so that something in the relative foreground, like a star or a galaxy, can distort or even magnify something in the background—a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. Astronomers saw the first example of gravitational lensing in 1979, when they observed what appeared to be a double quasar 8.7 billion light years from Earth, but that turned out to be a single one, visually warped by an intervening galaxy. Since then, researchers have used these cosmic optical illusions as a way to map out dark matter, discover rogue planets and find distant supernovas, among other things.

Now a team led by Arjen van der Wel of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany has announced what he understatedly calls a “weird and interesting discovery,” and what is more precisely described as the most distant gravitational lens ever seen. The lensing object is a galaxy some 9.4 billion light-years away—an enormous distance in a universe that burst into existence just 13.8 billion years ago.

The object being lensed—its image is split into four distinct spots of light—is obviously even more remote, although it’s so small and faint that it’s hard to assign its distance a hard number. What makes this discovery so weird, though, isn’t its distance but the nature of the thing being magnified. It’s a tiny dwarf galaxy whose weight in stars adds up to only about 100 million Suns’ worth—a piker compared with the Milky Way’s 100 billion or more. The overall color of the galaxy tells astronomers that it’s also very young—no more than 40 million years old—and forming stars at a furious rate.

Dwarf galaxies aren’t especially rare; astronomers keep finding them flitting around the Milky Way, and think many more are waiting to be found. But these tiny galaxies can’t sustain bursts of star formation for very long since they don’t have a lot of raw material to work with. That ought to have made this one very hard to spot, since it was at such a distance and it would have been bright enough to see only for a relatively small sliver of its lifespan. That, plus the inherent difficulty involved in the lensing effect occurring at all—the foreground and background objects have to line up with exquisite precision—makes the fact that this lensed galaxy ever turned up in telescopes even more improbable, the result of just the right conditions and angles converging at just the right time.

Maybe that’s all it was—a cosmic coincidence. “[T]he discovery was completely by chance,” van der Wel said in a statement that accompanied the announcement of the discovery. But another case very similar to it occurred just a few years ago. Nobody is quite sure how such a thing could happen, unless astronomers’ ideas about how stars form are wrong somehow. Maybe dwarf galaxies are brighter than we know, giving birth to stars for far longer than we believe. That could force us to rethink our most basic notions about the nature of dwarf galaxy behavior and formation. And since full-grown galaxies like the Milky Way were originally assembled out of much smaller ones that merged, that could alter the conventional wisdom about how our own galaxy came to be—something we never would have been in a position to contemplate at all if Einstein’s craziest idea hadn’t turned out to be one more good one.

The special relativity equations fundamentally has an error ie relativistic gamma can be positive or negative.This implied in all the special relativity equations,it is the absolute value of the same that ought to be considered.Since, we have allowed an error of this type, to persist for more than a century and then consequently, verify STR for more than 1s or 1kg,we find,it is only accurate upto half the speed of light.Pls go thru my publications for the same.Otherwise,if we are going to consider Einstein absolute and not indulge in TRUST,BUT VERIFY principle mentioned in the recent issue of the "THE ECONOMIST",we will be adding enormous amount of pseudo-science or junk into the world of science,it so happens in the modern world,this load of rubbish is dumped by the scientific communiity and it has exceeded more than 50%,in major scientific disciplines.So it is hightime a revolutionary approach like a reformation in science,take root and remove the scientific scoundrels from the scene.

The Physics Community gives the constant 0 (zero) to Gravitational Potential Energy (GPE). The Physics community says that the constant is an arbitrary value (any value will do, they say), yet:

(1) this value of 0 (zero) for GPE is necessarily 1, since the POTENTIAL of anything at its maximum is always 100%; and

(2) a GPE of 0 (zero) is necessary for Stephen Hawking and others who use that value in order to prove that our universe popped up from nothing: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist." – 'God did not create the universe, says Hawking', Reuters, By Michael Holden, LONDON | Thu Sep 2, 2010 9:08am EDT.

For example, if the universe consisted of only the Earth and the Moon, and the Moon is catapulted so far away from the Earth that its gravitational energy no longer affects the Earth, the gravitational energy doesn't disappear. According to the Law of Conservation of Energy, the gravitational energy becomes POTENTIAL energy (GPE). This GPE Stephen Hawking (and the Physics community) assigns the constant 0 (zero) to. Now, when we return the Moon back to Earth's orbit, GPE is said to be -1, according to the Physics community.

Here's the math for Stephen Hawking and the Physics community and my correction:

Earth's mass [1] + Moon's GPE when back in Earth's orbit [-1] = 0, so universes are for free,

however if we use correct constants for what we are describing, the equation reads like this:

Earth's mass [1] + Moon's GPE when back in Earth's orbit [0] = 1, so universes are not for free.

Let's further examine the above:

When the Moon's GPE ceases when back in Earth's orbit, that is when ACTUAL Gravitational Kinetic Energy (GKE) is 100%, which would have a constant of 1. Now GKE is simply the CONVERSE of GPE, so now let's move the Moon away from the Earth again. KGE declines as the Moon moves further away from the Earth (.9, .8, .7, .6 and so on), and conversely GPE increases (.1, .2, .3, .4, .5 and so on until the Moon has reached infinity distance from the Earth, in which case, logically, GPE would be 1, not 0).

GKE and GPE are the same phenomena, just separated by space, not unlike the duel sides of a coin. This converse relationship between GKE and GPE is also the discovery of what I call the Gravitational Converse Principle.

Stephen Hawking's (and the Physics Community) assignment of the constant zero to GPE at infinity is inexplicable.

Proofs:

1. If GPE is 0 (zero) at infinity, then there can be no GKE; and

2. ask yourself how could Stephen Hawking and the Physics Community not know what "potential" means by assigning zero to something (in this particular case, Gravitation POTENTIAL Energy) that is 100% potential? Obviously, if something is 100%, the constant one would use to quantify it is 1, and such a constant wouldn't be an arbitrary assignment (as the Physics Community says the assignment of the constant zero to GPE is, it could be any number, they say), it would be a NECESSARY assignment.

So dark energy is something that Einstein didn't believe in, fair enough. But then you go on to talk about gravitational lensing that was based on his discovery of general relativity. Where does dark energy come in, was that just an attempt to put Einstein on the title to get people to read your article? pitiful my man, pitiful.

Eagle11772 couldn't agree more. Maybe one day our great great grandchildren will sail through the vast wonders of this glorious creation much like our great great grandfathers braved the the treacherous waters of the mighty ocean to discover new worlds. First we have to survive these times i'm afraid, a task almost as daunting and much more treacherous

@ShawnS.Hudson Einstein predicted that you could have gravitational lensing with normal matter, stars, black holes, etc. We are learning about dark energy/matter by gravitational lensing occurring where there are otherwise no normal matter to account for it.

I don't know why we are still debating Einstein's Special and General Relativity theories. These are "local" theories in that they map all motion into a spatial reference system, and limit the maximum speed of any physical effect to speeds less than that of light. However, experiments have shown that electric, magnetic, and gravitational fields have effects that occur so rapidly the speed of propagation cannot even be measured. Their actions are essentially instantaneous (i.e., "non-local") See:

Additionally, numerous experiments of different experimental designs done by different groups over a span of several decades have demonstrated that our physical world is definitely a "non-local" one. This means that Relativity is limited to describing reference system effects only--useful but not fundamental.

Technology over the years has made enormous progress. But a MAJOR part of science itself still seems to be stuck back in 1906. We are missing a logical HALF of our physical science knowhow!

So what happened? Why isn't our educational system stepping up to the plate and going to bat for us? Why are we still wasting enormous amounts of money on "big science" research projects that are clearly off in the weeds?

@PradeepKoshy First, these papers are poorly written. Second, the journals you have selected to publish in will accept, essentially, any paper. Ignoring the writing and focusing on the mathematics, you make basic mistakes in algebra. The square of a square root is not equal to the item under the radix, rather it is equal to its absolute value. In the end most of what you wrote is just dibble. If you had attempted to submit to a real journal it would have been rejected immediately.

@lvleph@PradeepKoshy The square of a square root is not equal to the item under the radix, rather it is equal to its absolute value..In refuting the same, since i have only considered positive quantities time t and mass m are positive quantities.Journals like NATURE, JMP etc doesn't publish extraordinary achievements by ordinary souls.the equivalent of a Michael Faraday of the present era.

@eagle11772@TitaniumDragon@#libtardedamericaEagle, I'm not sure I follow. If god is a real entity, why can't it be subject to scientific scrutiny? How can religion even begin to describe who god is if we are still inchoate in our understanding of the universe itself?

@TitaniumDragon@#libtardedamerica They are complementary. They are concerned with different things. Just as the science of chemistry and the science of biology are different things, they are obviously not mutually exclusive. Science is the study of WHAT God has made. Religion is the study of WHO God is. Two very different questions.

@PradeepKoshy@lvleph I have to agree with lvleph about the quality of the papers. Nature, et al. do publish ordinary people if they discover something extraordinary, such as Watson and Crick being published in Nature.

But I'm curious about this miracle equation, so here's a problem if you care to solve it: